


Seasons (John)

by leonidaslion



Series: Seasons [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Drama, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:32:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at John seen through the prism of the changing seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons (John)

  
**Spring**   


It’s spring when Mary finds him: mid-April and cold, raining. John never thinks of it in any other terms: they don’t meet, she doesn’t run into him and he doesn’t stumble across her. When a man is standing by the side of the road, rain soaking into his backpack and plastering his hair to his head, and a woman pulls her daddy’s pickup over to the shoulder and rolls down the passenger window and asks if he needs a lift, well, there’s just no way around it. Mary finds him and she keeps him. John never really has much of a say in the matter.

She drops him off at his uncle’s place with a wave and a private, little smile, and tells him not to be a stranger. He tells her he won’t, and he means it, cause she smells real nice and she’s funny and has this way about her. But he never gets a chance to keep his word because when he stumbles out of bed in the morning, she’s waiting for him in the kitchen.

He just about swallows his tongue when he sees her there, and it’s almost a full minute before he realizes that he’s standing in front of her wearing a pair of skivvies and white socks and that’s _it_. John’s a Winchester, and he doesn’t run from anything, damnit—doesn’t run when the bombs are falling and gunfire is bursting all around and the Dougal kid’s head is fucking _exploding_ all over his jacket—but he hightails it out of that kitchen like his ass is on fire, sure enough, and he can hear her laughter chasing him all the way back up the stairs.

She takes him out walking, and somehow the flowers that she picks along the way wind up braided into his hair, short as it is, and by the time she takes her leave in the afternoon he’s somehow agreed to dinner and a movie and two point five kids and forever. That night, Uncle Mickey tells him that he looks a little shell shocked, and John owns that that’s pretty much the way he feels. Because one minute he’s backpacking cross-country to his uncle’s place, and the next he’s being taken up by this minxish slip of a thing. She’s upturned the entire apple cart, she has, and _goddamn_ but he can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.

After that, he can never really think about spring the same way. Spring is the continual play of rain and light across Mary’s face as she lies in bed next to him, and the scent of the flowers she insists on bringing into the house. Whenever he asks her if maybe she’s overdoing it, just a little, she laughs and tickles his nose with tulips. Then Dean comes along and he hates the flowers—hates spring and everything connected to it, mostly because the rains pen him indoors; Mary doesn’t want the kid tracking mud all over the place when he comes back in.

But sometimes, when Mary’s out shopping or visiting her folks, John sneaks Dean outside anyway, and they splash around in the puddles and get good and covered in muck. John always means to be back inside and cleaned up before Mary gets home, but he’s never able to time it right, and she’s always coming in the front door when he’s letting Dean in the back. Mary takes one look at the two of them and her eyes go big and wide and her mouth thins into an angry line.

“Uh oh, we’ve been fingered,” John whispers in Dean’s ear.

Dean squirms out of his arms and squeals, “Run!” before tearing through the house on his way to the refuge of his room, flaking mud on floor and walls and carpet as he goes. John doesn’t intend that at all, not really, but when Mary’s stern face breaks apart into laughter, he knows that he’ll do it again and again; he’ll help Dean wallpaper the walls with dirt in order to hear that sound coming out of his wife’s mouth. John play-growls and sweeps her up into his arms before she can protest and there’s mud everywhere but it’s so simple and honest and _right_ that none of that matters.

Hard to believe, but it gets even better when Sammy shows up. John can tell right away that Sammy is Mary’s child. He sees it in the determined little line that forms across Sammy’s forehead when he wants something, and in the sweet, wide smiles he offers up the rest of the time. And he knows straight off that Dean is completely and utterly infatuated with his little brother, who has replaced the puppy next door and T-Rex and even Scooby Doo himself as the neatest thing in the whole wide world.

John finds himself retreating to those sweet spring memories more and more as the ache in his heart, which should be lessening with time, swells fit to bursting. He wonders sometimes if it was all just a dream, too perfect to be real, or if his memories are faulty. Perhaps he was high on pollen and Mary and the possibility of this perfect new life, and the warning signs were there from the beginning. In his heart, though, spring remains pure, and John keeps it locked away from the rest of himself. Keeps it from the bloody filth that is slowly seeping into his skin, staining him.

Spring is a clean thing and if John gets a little sad, a little melancholy, when the rains fall and he sees flowers everywhere—Mary’s flowers—it’s nobody’s business but his own. Sometimes he takes a little nip from the bottle to dull the pain, and in the amber wash of whiskey he can see her, pulling over to the side of the road, and wonders why it is, if he’s been found, that he always feels so damned lost.

  
**Summer**   


John will be the first to admit that he knows fuck-all about raising kids. He fumbles through things okay as long as Mary is there to give him a little shove in the right direction—take him by the ear and _haul_ him in the right direction if he needs it—but without her at the helm, he keeps veering off course. He notices it most during the summer: the long, hot days where there’s nothing to distract his boys, no place of authority to deposit them so he can get a little rest.

He drops them off at Pastor Jim’s the first few summers, but Dean sobs and wails and finally hides himself in the Impala’s trunk. The kid almost suffocates before John realizes, forty miles down the road, what’s happened, and after that John stops trying. He can feel Dean’s stare, hard and unflappable, when the weather turns again, and it takes three summers running before Dean finally understands that John’s through with that particular avenue of release.

And now there’s spilt juice in the backseat and broken toys flung at his head and once Sammy’s grubby little hands wrapping around his eyes when he’s driving sixty miles an hour down a two-lane dirt track masquerading as a highway and _Christ_ what are they trying to do, give him a heart attack?

It’s only a matter of time before John starts funneling their energy the only way he knows how, wearing them out with laps and pushups and crunches. At first it’s just a self-defense mechanism, something he does because otherwise they’re going to drive him fucking nuts. But it’s a slippery slope he’s standing on, and one night, in an empty parking lot with the pavement still cooling from the day’s driving heat, Dean shoves John from behind, hard and unexpected, and he loses his balance.

Because one of those damned black dogs has followed him home and it’s suddenly on top of him, it’s going to tear his throat out. Only it’s being knocked off him instead, and there’s the sound of a gun discharging. John looks up, looks behind him, and there’s Dean standing in the doorway of their motel room. John’s revolver looks monstrous, oversized against those tiny fingers, and where the hell did he get that anyway? Dean’s hands are shaking, and his eyes are open so wide it looks like they’re going to fall right out of his face. Sammy’s clutching his brother’s legs and peering around his side, mouth trembling like he’s gonna bawl at any moment.

After, when John’s taken care of the dog properly, he wants to smack Dean and hug him and he’s terrified and proud all at the same time. Dean lets him take the gun, and John thinks that he might cry, but in the end it’s Sammy who does, startling all of them with a loud, petulant wail. Dean turns around and scoops his little brother up awkwardly—getting a little big for that, now, the both of them—and stumbles back inside with him.

It’s Dean who calms Sammy down while John stands in the doorway, floored by the fucked up situation he suddenly finds himself in. And John never forgives himself for that.

Summer changes when he starts training the boys. All those laps and pushups and crunches look different when he knows in his head that he’s working toward a concrete goal. That he’s forging them into strong men, capable of defending themselves. He means it only as a precaution, until they’re old enough to build a life away from the crap John’s wading through, but Dean keeps pushing, manipulating him into teaching them more than he means to. Dean asks questions when John’s too distracted to answer with anything other than the truth. He wheedles promises when John’s mind is foggy from lack of sleep and he can’t maneuver properly.

It gets so it’s easier to run their lives like a drill sergeant, and Dean, at least, reacts well to that. In fact, it’s the first time since Mary died that John has seen his eldest look so happy, so content, and he hates that it’s taken _this_ to bring Dean out of his shell. John wishes that his eldest was a little more like Sammy because he can see the road spread out in front of him: long and bloody and dark, and nothing he ever wants for either of his boys. And now John’s stuck watching one son sprint off ahead of him while he drags the other along behind because he’s too fucking stupid to figure out what else to do.

The more John sees, the more they train, the more trapped he feels. He’s beginning to realize that there’s a war out there, and turning their backs on it isn’t going to make it go away. Somewhere along the way, John ends up face down at the bottom of that slippery, slippery slope. He treats his boys like soldiers instead of sons, and he’s never sure how that happened, only that it has its origins in that bile-bitter taste of fear in his mouth, and the sight of his gun in his firstborn’s hands.

In the summer, when the days are almost bright enough and hot enough to burn away the decaying, dark places inside him, John gives in. He lets himself fall into the easy routine of hunt and move on, hunt and move on, and he makes damn sure that if anything ever comes after his boys, they’ll be able to protect themselves. He’s keeping them alive and safe the only way he knows how, and if it makes him a little sick to his stomach sometimes, well then, John can live with that, and so can they. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?

  
**Autumn**   


Autumn and John spends the whole season with the taste of ash in his mouth, counting down the days before, and struggling to rebuild himself after. November 2nd is the one day of the year that he keeps for himself. It’s probably the most selfish thing he’s ever done because he knows Dean’s hurting too, knows that his son hates that day almost as much as John does. But there are places John needs to take himself that he doesn’t ever want Dean going.

He leaves the boys with Bobby until Dean turns fourteen, and then he just leaves Sammy home alone with his brother. John spends November 2nd driving until he doesn’t know where he is anymore. He finds a shithole bar and drinks until he’s stinking of it, until booze is pressing out through his pores, and then he pinpoints the biggest, foulest-tempered asshole in the place and proceeds to get his ass handed to him on a plate. Then he stumbles back to wherever he’s left his sons, driving just under twenty the entire way, and passes out on the floor.

When he wakes up the next day, it’s late afternoon and he’s hung over like to die. He can hear Sammy, playing outside so that he doesn’t have to look at the wreck John’s made of himself, and feels the first, bitter stab of pain. It gets worse when he realizes that Dean’s sitting next to him, sopping up the blood with a wet towel. There’s reproach in his son’s eyes, anger in his silence. And that’s the capper on the whole, sorry mess because Dean’s not upset that John’s done this to himself. No, Dean’s upset because John didn’t let him come along: that John refuses to let him be a part of it.

Dean has Mary’s eyes, and John can never see that look on his son’s face without knowing that Mary would hate this, that she’d be more than a little disappointed in him. But John’s weak, and sometimes he needs it, needs to be punished for what he let happen to her. He needs to remember that he couldn’t save her. It fuels the anger he keeps locked down in his gut, and someday, when he finds what he’s looking for, that anger is going to ensure that the bastard sits up and takes notice. Mary’s murderer is going to fucking _beg_ before John’s through with it.

But that day, Mary’s day, is only one among many, and there are other things that autumn brings.

It brings the boys back to school, for one, and it breaks John’s heart to see how happy that makes Sammy. The kid’s an odd duck: bright as a fucking button, and God knows he didn’t get that from John. But Sammy’s also strangely naïve when it comes to people, and his transparent attempts to manipulate John into letting him stay home from a hunt are downright pathetic.

John lets the boy think he’s getting away with it anyway because he remembers his own pop doing the same for him. It doesn’t hurt matters none that he loves coming home, Dean trotting after, grinning and yammering on about how they punched that little bitch’s clock— _language, Dean; sorry, sir_ —and seeing Sammy sprawled out on the couch. He’s snoring and his books, which he obviously hasn’t cracked all night, are closed in front of him. The room is a wash of white from the TV static and there’s an open can of Coke on the coffee table.

John snaps off the set and leaves Dean to collect his brother because whenever John wakes him, Sammy comes around snappish and on guard, but when it’s Dean he only smiles a little and asks how everything went. Then Dean’s talking a mile a minute, filling Sammy in on all the gory details, and all the while he’s helping his brother up and herding him off to bed. Those are good nights.

Dean could give a shit whether or not they have a pumpkin at Halloween, but Sammy’s adamant on the subject and John makes sure to pick one up every year because he can at least give his son that much. He packs the boys into the Impala and drives them to a farmer’s stand and lets Sammy choose whichever one he wants. When they get home, John helps his youngest carve the damn thing and then brings out the bag of candy he bought when the boys weren’t looking.

Suddenly Dean’s real interested in the proceedings, and both he and Sammy are clamoring around John’s feet. John sprints into the living room, and the boys are on his heels like a pack of dogs. Dean tackles him and before he can do anything to retaliate, Sammy’s there digging fingers into the soft spot under John’s fourth rib and that’s it, game’s over, because suddenly it’s all John can do to breathe for laughing. Dean snatches the bag from his lax fingers and then both boys are whooping their victory so loudly that John has to shut them up before one of the neighbors calls the cops.

The year Sammy refuses to get in the car is the year John realizes he’s lost his son. He’s been losing Sammy for a long time now—he knows that, he’s not blind—but for some reason it’s that moment that sticks in his craw. Dean, who’s never been into this, and who’d rather be out romancing one of the local beauties, is already waiting in the Impala, and Sammy is shouting at John from the porch— _it’s lame, that’s why_ , and, _it’s_ Sam, _you controlling asshole_! Frustrated, John shouts back— _get in the goddamned car and that’s an_ order—before his brain wakes up and tells him that it’s a crap idea, and Sam sulks all the way to the market. The pumpkin, uncarved, sits on the sink overnight before John throws it out, and three days pass before Sam opens his mouth to say anything to him, and even then it’s only to ask John to pass the salt.

John does his best to give his son some space after that, but Sam pursues him like a damn dog with a bone. The boy’s determined to pick fights. Everything is a fucking debate with him, and John finds himself locked in shouting match after shouting match. Later, he can never remember what Sam said to make him so mad, and he promises that he won’t let it get that far again. But it’s easier to give ultimatums than it is to explain things he doesn’t rightly understand himself, and he’s so fucking _weary_ with the taste of ash in his mouth, and the days counting down to the second. So he always ends up digging in like the blind bull he is, shoulders squared and head lowered. Sam keeps getting further and further away, Dean somehow ends up playing referee, and John feels like such a goddamned failure he could just. Give. Up.

Sometimes it gets to be too much and it’s leave or beat the living shit out of his obstinate son, so John jumps in the car and drives without stopping, without calling or letting anyone know where he is. Most times he doesn’t know the answer to that himself. When he finally returns to whatever rundown apartment they’re calling home that month, Dean is beside himself with worry and Sam is full of contempt, positive John has been off on some kind of “Miller trip”. John knows where the kid’s gotten that idea—it’s only one day a year, but it’s a fucking memorable occasion, isn’t it? —and he doesn’t even bother trying to correct him. It isn’t like Sam’s opinion of his old man can get any lower anyway.

Autumn is all around, suffocating him, and John just has to soldier on. He has to bury himself in hunting and training and let Sam go one way while he and Dean belly crawl through the trenches in the opposite direction. He’s never more tempted to give it all up and just settle down somewhere, let the matter drop, but John’s always been a stubborn asshole. This is only ever going to end one way: with the son of a bitch that murdered his wife a red smear on John’s hands. And if he has to lose Sam’s love to do it, well then, that’s just one more casualty of war.

Sometimes John can make himself believe that. Almost, anyway.

  
**Winter**   


Autumn is bad but winter is fucking hideous. Winter reminds him of the black time After, when he’s trying to get a handle on himself and every day is a struggle just to keep moving, keep breathing. He sits in the bathroom for hours on end, turning his service pistol over in his hands and listening to the silence coming from the other room. Silence is the sound Dean makes now because he refuses to talk, hasn’t said a word since the fire. John knows that if he goes out there, Dean will be in the crib with Sammy, one hand curled around his brother and the other held up to his mouth, thumb tucked between his teeth, eyes fastened on the tacky motel wallpaper.

John can’t handle this. He can barely manage to take care of himself right now, let alone his sons. He thinks he might be losing it because he saw Mary on the ceiling—on the fucking _ceiling_ —before she burned, and that’s just not natural. He can’t bring himself to give his boys away, can’t watch them go, but if he’s gone then the state will have to take them. And then someone will look after them. Someone will make Dean open his damn mouth, and get Sammy to stop crying whenever his brother gets more than five feet away from him.

So the bathroom, and the gun, and it gets to be a ritual, almost mystic in nature. Every day it gets easier and harder at the same time, and finally he’s so fucking close to putting just a little more weight on the trigger that he never hears Dean open the door. But he hears his son’s shattered breath plain as day, and his voice, rough with disuse.

“No.”

And because it’s the first word Dean has spoken in over two months, John listens.

He stumbles across Missouri the next day, and he learns that he isn’t crazy after all. He begins to understand what’s happened to him and the bleak depression unfurls into rage, hot and bright and clean. Inside he’s burning, but his skin feels like ice, like winter’s got its talons in him and it isn’t going to let go.

If John pushes himself a little harder in the winter, then it’s because if he’s not moving, not working, those first black months are all he can think about. The job works fine as a distraction until Dean turns nine and the only thing he wants for his birthday is a gun. A fucking gun at nine years old. Yeah right, kiddo, pull the other one. But Dean is obstinate, so John has to ask around, find out what other nine-year-old kids are into these days. The answer he gets is a study in irony, and he’s positive it’ll appeal to his son’s sense of humor. In a way, it’s what Dean asked for anyway, but when Dean unwraps the proton pack, he’s so fucking disappointed that John thinks it might have been better if he skipped Dean’s birthday entirely this year.

All month after that, Dean wants to know what he’s done wrong, what he’s not getting right, like it’s some kind of _punishment_ that John wouldn’t let him have a gun of his own. He keeps promising to do better, pushes himself into training with an almost fanatical fervor, and when John actually has to _order_ Dean to stop running laps he feels like throwing up. Things ease off as they slide into spring, as Dean refocuses himself on Sammy, but February has set off all sorts of warning bells in John’s head. So he spends the rest of the year watching Dean more closely than usual, and he begins to understand what he’s made of his firstborn.

Dean is nothing but drive and determination. He doesn’t know how to turn himself off, how to power down for more than a few minutes at a time. The boy lives in John’s space, trying to ferret his way inside his _head_ , learning his obsession, figuring out what he needs to be so that John will let him help, let him hunt. Dean’s nine years old, for crying out loud, and he’s already a better soldier than most of the men John’s served with: smart as a tack, strong for his age and quick to follow orders.

Dean spends every waking moment not devoted to Sam as a heavy burr on John’s back. It seems like he’s there every time John turns around, wanting to know more, wanting to _do_ more. When can he hunt with John, and not just help with research? When can he have a gun? He’s big enough, this year, careful enough. He’s been training real hard, has Dad noticed? Oh, and Sammy sneezed at fifteen oh five today, maybe they should take him to the doctor. He’s just so _intense_ and John needs to find a way to slow him down, to make him breathe, make him remember he’s a kid and not some damned machine.

So when winter rolls around again, John stops. Stops moving them around, stops hunting, stops training. Christ, does it drive him bugshit! And the whole time, Dean’s right behind him, keying into his emotions and getting himself more worked up with each passing day, until John’s not sure which of them is going to rattle apart at the seams first. He wants to cave, wants to stop torturing Dean—and, by extension, himself—but if Dean doesn’t learn to tone it down a notch, then he’s going to burn out before he hits twenty.

Instead of caving, John forces himself to calm down. He runs through the relaxation techniques he learned in the Marines, and picks up a few new ones from Pastor Jim, who seems to know a little about everything under the sun. John spends an entire day parked in an old armchair with a sprung bottom, getting up to piss and eat and that’s it. It’s torture, that’s what it is. He needs to move so fucking bad, needs to _hunt_ , and he can feel Dean watching him, studying him, trying to figure out if this is some weird new form of training.

John makes himself do it again the next day, and it’s a little easier. He can feel something inside himself unwinding, and he realizes that maybe he needs this as much as Dean does. He lets himself slow, watches as time slides into taffy, pulls out smooth and thick. Dean bounces around the house for a few weeks, and then he putters for a few more, and then, finally—God, _finally_ —he stalls out.

John makes a habit of it, after that, and if he never reaches the Zen-like state he achieved that first winter, it doesn’t matter. Because John can see Dean tuning into the pace he’s setting, teaching himself that winter is a time of rest, a time to let go. Even if Dean doesn’t understand how or why, he’s learning to recharge, and John wants to get down on his hands and knees and thank the God he no longer believes in for letting his crazy, foolish notion work.

But nothing’s ever that simple because he’s John Winchester, and as soon as he manages to slow Dean down, Sam’s hanging on his arm and pestering him for information the way his brother does the rest of the year. Sam’s asking John to help him train, for fuck’s sake, and pushing him into hunts and John is _never_ going to understand this kid. Drags his feet for three quarters of the year and then, when John gives him what he’s always asking for—a steady home and a loosening of discipline and a chance to be _normal_ , whatever that means—he does a complete 180 and knocks John on his ass.

He panics the first time it happens. Wonders what kind of mess he’s made this time. He doesn’t want to have saved Dean only to drag Sam headfirst into the wreck his life has become. Sam hates it here, and he has to _keep_ hating it because John doesn’t know how to reign _Dean_ in half the time, and if Sam joins forces with his brother, then they’ll roll right over him. John remembers that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and can’t sleep for fear that that’s exactly where this new development is headed.

But then the weather turns and Dean starts coming out of his winter-induced stupor, and Sam swings violently back the other way. It’s like he and Dean are the opposite sides of the same magnet, which is confusing as all hell, and John knows that he’s the one responsible. He’s done this, somehow, by maneuvering Dean into giving himself a break, and now he has to deal with the consequences.

John gets used to the change, but it always makes him a little uneasy. He doesn’t want this life for Sam, not in a million years—he’s never wanted it for either of his boys, but Dean’s hurled himself too far in to be pulled out now. And maybe it’s too late for Sam, too; maybe these slices of winter are a window onto the boy’s future. John hears things over the years, whispers low to the ground. And he begins to think that maybe that night in the nursery has less to do with chance and more to do with Sam.

So when Sam announces that he has a full ride to Stanford University, grey skies and the skeletal reach of trees fill John’s mind. He shouts at Sam to get out and be done with it, tells him that he damn well better stay gone. Sam claws at John and John pushes back until he’s made pretty damn sure that the boy won’t ever come home, won’t even try to call. He knows what this is doing to Dean, can see it written all over his son’s face, but he ploughs ahead anyway.

John is rupturing this family, and he’s doing it deliberately because the more he uncovers about that night in the nursery, the more certain he is that something’s out there, stalking them, tightening a net. John’s putting Sam outside that net before he’s trapped and can’t ever leave, can’t have the life he wants. Because John may have gotten used to winter’s Sam, but it’s autumn’s Sammy that he loves. And if winter wants to take his son, it’s going to have to do it over John’s dead body.

* * *

It isn’t winter when John finally loses his grip on the rabid bronco he’s been riding for so many years, but it feels like winter inside. It tastes like winter as he leans over Dean’s bed and whispers damning words into his ear.

John goes to his end willingly, thinking about winter and the way that Sam and Dean are like the opposite ends of the same magnet. As he hands over the Colt and his own worthless soul, he prays like hell that the laws of physics can be broken. Knows that that’s the only way they’re going to win this: with winter’s Sam and summer’s Dean standing side by side, guns cocked and heads high.

John doesn’t believe in God anymore, hasn’t in years, but he has faith in his sons. They are Winchesters, after all, and the legions of Hell are just going to have to get the fuck out of the way.


End file.
